The Spirit of exploration and new ways of perceiving reality in The Sea Of Poppies of Amitav Ghosh RAJA AMBETHKAR M (original) (raw)

Voicing Unspoken Histories. Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies as Research Novel

History and Narration: Looking back from the Twentieth …, 2011

The first book of Ghosh’s projected trilogy about the Opium Wars—waged between the British crown and China to open the Chinese markets to western opium—provides Alessandro Vescovi with the material for assessing the writer’s poetics of historical novel writing. Thorough research, comprehensiveness and precise imagination are the keywords of his poetical and political stance. Sea of Poppies (2008) is first and foremost a research novel, based upon historical documents of diverse origin and authority. These range from official accounts and reports about an opium factory in Patna, to documents found in remote archives, such as the British Library, the Mauritius National Archives, Canton’s Library. Vescovi reads some of these sources against the actual fictional rendition of the plight of opium workers in nineteenth-century Bihar. The imperial sources depicted the factory as a clean and well lighted place, were efficiency was the governing principle. On the contrary, the same factory is described by Ghosh as a scene from Dante’s Inferno. The colonizers’ discourse is thus counteracted by the novelist’s comprehensive research and imaginative microhistories which expose the lies embedded in the macrohistory of the imperial project.

Reconstructing Identities in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies : A Postmodernist Perspective

Language in India ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 13:10 www.languageinindia.com, 2013

This paper is an attempt to present individuals' quest for new methods of representation to challenge the global conditions and ever-increasing cultural multiplicity. In Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies this condition is delineated through a panorama of characters who migrate to an alien place in a ship called the Ibis. In a colonial backdrop, Ghosh draws attention to the historical consequences of imperialism leading to migration and displacement of people. By using the tools of deconstruction, this paper will focus on how the characters try to escape their names, caste, race, bodies, and places of origin while reconstructing identity. Cut off from the older personal, familial and national ties these migrants forge new identity and adopt the Ibis as new cultural community.

Routes Beyond Roots: Alternative Ecological Histories in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

Indialogs

This article will read Amitav Ghosh's novel Sea of Poppies as an account of "world histories from below" (Antoinette Burton, 2012) and position the writing of alternative histories of the colonial times within an ecocritical context. While such rewritings have always been a central preoccupation of postcolonial literature, the recent tendency has been to look at history from increasingly local, individualised perspectives. I will examine Ghosh's tracing of routes and connectivities across the Indian Ocean at the time immediately preceding the opium wars, focusing on his reconsideration of human relationships and hierarchies in an ecocritical perspective. This perspective cuts across boundaries established by caste, class, biology, geography and the colonial system, which Ghosh has long been interested in re-evaluating. While on board the Ibis identities become deterritorialised and fluid, they are disconnected from their roots and paths established by rigid culturally conditioned frameworks. Connections are established between the human and other forms of life, forming a continuum across the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, which becomes a fluid space of rebuilding identities. I will use a theoretical framework informed by Bruno Latour's concept of a politics of nature, Donna Haraway's nature-culture negotiations and Rosi Braidotti's eco-conscious ethics.

The Myths and Ways of the Seas/Rivers in Amitav Ghosh’s Novel – Sea of Poppies (2008)

Amitav Ghosh explores subjectively the people’s consciousness as regards culture, myths and existence. He embraces the fact that the myths and the ways of the seas/rivers purports the reality of culture, the creation of challenges, fabulation and skilful time shifts, sense of paranoia and hyperreality past the industrial age. His novels are reactions to the questions of the chaotic, pluralistic, or information-drenched aspects of postmodern society which depicts the theme of fragmentation and a metaphysically unfounded, chaotic universe of the people’s life on the banks of the holy river Ganges in Calcutta in context of trans-historical phenomena happened prior to the First Opium War/ Anglo-Chinese War during 1839-42. His novel exhaustively examines expeditions, encounters, exploitation and escapes of criminals/ indentured labourers/underclass off the coast of Canton, Hong Kong, Macao and Indian migrants travelling through ships to seek indentured labour for plantations in Mauritius and in British West Indies. The present study proposes to study the seas/river symbolism as the creative power of nature and time. The study deals with the question how the interior reality is marginalized by placing the individual within a historical context i.e. exterior reality. Thirdly the study aims to observe the third world cultural texts and context in view of the writer’s historical and political dimension.

Representation of Dismantled Identity and Colonial Politics in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

The article narrates colonial politics adopted by the British and side by side, it probes the dismantled image of national identity. It describes colonialism as a result of narrow nationalistic feeling and thus it looks forward for a postnational feeling. So it demands for a change in nationalistic outlook. Through the analysis of Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, it puts into question the concept of national identity as a static one. The novel is set in 1838 but through the narration of pre-independent colonial politics and opium trade policy, it hints at the pre-independent global market and pluralism prevalent in the society. The concept of national identity is always attached with the designed features like national language, national flag, border etc. But, this novel, through the representation of different characters from different parts of the world in the Ibis brings into light a dismantled image of national identity. The paper focuses on the binary opposition White/Other and highlights the narrow nationalistic feeling behind this binary system and thus argues for a change in nationalistic feeling and demands for a global outlook. National identity, simply attaches itself with the concept of nation. The features of nation vary according to the spatio-temporal matrix of a particular nation. But the common features that can be found in it are national flag, national anthem or different types of other ideological adaptations. These formations are nothing but an effort to uphold the distinctiveness of a

Colonialism and Cross-Cultural Ties in Sea of Poppies

2023

The present study will emphasize Colonialism and Cross-cultural ties in the Sea of Poppies of Amitav Ghosh. "Colonialism" describes a trend that emerged towards the latter of the 20th century. Modernism was in decline after modernity, and postmodernism emerged. Postcolonial literature, mostly novels, addresses important human concerns including culture across borders and the quest for identity. This paper aims to show how differences merge in the novel to create a mixed society made up of persons from varied social and geographic backgrounds who voyage on the ship Ibis to a distant land where they unwillingly forge new identities. Design: Peer-reviewed journals, educational websites, research articles and both national and international periodicals were used to compile information needed for this topic. The methodology used for the study is done by gathering, analyzing, and comprehending prior knowledge. Amitav Ghosh's selected works are thoroughly understood and read, besides research papers on related topics. The researcher will adhere to the guidelines in the APA Manual during the study. Findings: The purpose of the study will be to find out about Colonialism and identity in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, after reviewing many publications, like essays, theses and books. It is proved cross culture is not a static presence; in each given circumstance it differs from one person to person, region to region, culture to culture, and country to country. Originality: The proposed study is unique as it will focus primarily on colonialism and crosscultural ties in sustaining identity, which will be achieved by understanding why Nations were eliminated, including individuals and communities.

The Sea is History": 1 Opium, Colonialism, and Migration in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

A light-skinned African American freedman passing for white, an Indian female farmer who has been rescued from sati (widow immola-tion), a French woman disguised as an Indian labourer, a British opium merchant, a half-Parsi and half-Chinese convict-these are some of the "mongrel" characters with complex histories that populate Amitav Ghosh's most recent novel, Sea of Poppies. Published in 2008, this novel is the first installment in a trilogy, which takes on the task of imagining the ways in which the histories of slavery, Opium trade, British Empire, and migration are interwoven. The story is set in 1838 against the backdrop of the opium trade and the beginnings of migration of indentured Indian labour to the Caribbean. The range of characters on the ship Ibis, an American ex-slaver now transporting Indian labourers to Mauritius, offers a broad canvas for Ghosh's historical novel of transnational connectivity. Through the interweaving of the characters' storie...